Visibility vs. Vulnerability

By Kenneth W. Banta

The Marines beef up security, but agonizing questions remain

Even as General Paul Kelley, the Marine Commandant, was insisting in Beirut last week that security for his troops had been adequate, Marines were hard at work bolstering the compound's defenses. At the main checkpoint, bright yellow Lebanese buses were being positioned to block the only access road. In front of the compound entrance, crews were swinging rows of sandbags into place, while along the main highway, fresh coils of barbed wire were tied to metal stakes. The number of sentries at nighttime guard posts was heavily increased.

These hastily implemented changes raised an agonizing question: Why had they not been made months ago? As angry members of Congress called for an inquiry, there was mounting concern that the Marines had not taken sufficient measures in light of the rapidly declining security situation since the end of August. Moreover, unsettling memories still linger of last April's bombing of the U.S. embassy, in which 63 people were killed.

The main questions involve the ease with which the terrorists' Mercedes truck burst through Marine defenses last Sunday. At 6:22 a.m. it rolled through a Lebanese Army checkpoint that guarded access to the Marine base (1), and drove south into the airport's unguarded civilian parking lot. There it circled once or twice to pick up speed (2), then hurtled through a roll of barbed wire (3) and sped between two guard posts (4). Two sentries were on duty, and under the Marines' standing orders for duty within the compound, their M-16 rifles were unloaded. As they struggled to insert their weapons' magazines, the vehicle crashed through a wrought-iron gate (5) and into the Marine compound. Either bouncing over or thrusting aside a single 18-in. sewer pipe (6) that was supposed to protect the entrance, the truck crashed through or went around a flimsy guardhouse in the doorway (7), perhaps running down the two Marines on duty, and into the lobby. An instant later, the driver detonated his lethal cargo. The dash from the parking lot was over in a matter of seconds.

Officials explain that the Marines' role in Lebanon as a high-profile peace-keeping force, together with the Lebanese policy of keeping the Beirut airport open to commercial flights, made total security impossible. Said Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger at a press conference last week: "Nothing can work against a suicide attack like that, any more than you could do anything about a kamikaze flight diving into a carrier in World War II."

Some terrorist strategies may indeed defy countermeasures. But although murder is a constant worry in Lebanon, precautions can be taken. Mats of steel spikes block the road to the Lebanese presidential palace, while huge stones and chunks of concrete form an inelegant but effective shield around the French embassy. In a sad irony, the Marines recently helped build two rows of heavily reinforced steel guardrails around the British embassy, where U.S. diplomats are temporarily housed.

In contrast, the Marines merely installed a pole gate, similar to the kind found at most railway crossings, and a barricade of dirt-filled oil drums at their main entrance. They left their southern flank virtually unprotected. Said Marine Spokesman Major Robert Jordan after the blast: "It [never] occurred to anyone that someone would try to charge through here."

The Marine command in Beirut issued a sketch of the attack route last week that revealed just how vulnerable the headquarters had been. The diagram shows the two sentry posts behind the barbed wire that separated the civilian parking lot from the Marine area. It also shows a second sewer pipe, but instead of being positioned as an obstacle across the roadway, as it apparently had been a few days earlier, it acted as little more than a lane divider on the road between the parking lot and the building. Although earlier reports had described the truck as crashing through a wall of sandbags, the diagram shows no such obstruction.

Security planning for the Marines has always been open to question. Serious efforts to build bunkers began only after the Marines had been shelled by Lebanese factions in July. Even then, officers apparently failed to requisition the heavy timbers needed to protect against direct hits. Despite the attacks that killed six Marines in two months, orders requiring men on duty at interval guard posts to keep their weapons unloaded were never changed. Extra bunkers had been built to disperse the troops, lessening the potential losses from any single assault. Yet on the afternoon before the bombing, a large crowd had gathered in the battalion landing team headquarters to attend a pop concert. Some of them may have decided to sleep over; others were spending the night before leaving on a one-week leave.

--By Kenneth W. Banta.

Reported by Jerry Hannifin/Washington and Roberto Suro/Beirut

With reporting by Jerry Hannifin/Washington, Robert Suro/Beirut This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.